And there's an option to LOWER it? Is anybody actually talking about doing that?

In Australia the minimum wage is almost $16/hr, or US$16.50. It increases most years, not sure if it's tied to CPI.

Yes, we don't have as big of a tipping culture, although when we do tip it's for good service, not because it's expected. It seems to me that tips are an excuse to pay your workers shit, and a lot of jobs don't get tips but still get the crappy pay.

You guys make it look like half the country earns the minimum wage. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Check the Department of Labor website and see for yourselves how few people actually work for the minimum wage. It's just a few percent of workers, and a good portion of those are teenagers, college students working part time, and second-income earners for a family.

OK let's do this scientifically. A theory predicts that a minimum wage will create unemployment. The null hypothesis is no effect, so proponents of that theory will need to go out and a) test or b) provide epidemiological evidence, (separating out all contended factors) that the minimum wage actually does create unemployment.

Now it just so happens that among the advocates of increasing the minimum wage we have people like Alan Krueger who have actually bothered at least to look at the real world. Krueger's empirical work led him to the conclusion (see Myth and Measurement [amazon.com]) that there is simply no empirical evidence to support the idea that the minimum wage chokes employment. If anything, Krueger claims, the opposite is the case.

Of course this is an intensely political subject and it would be insanely naive simply to accept the findings of a single researcher. In the current context, however, it must be noted a) that pundits like Peter Schiff, quoted by OP, don't sully their hands with empirical work; and b) the onus of proof rests with those who seek to overturn the null hypothesis. Even dismissing Krueger as overly rosy (or, more likely, overly committed), such evidence does not seem to be not forthcoming.

Now if this were a Science, we might be scratching our heads and wondering why reality and theory don't seem to match. Why would labour be any different from any other commodity? Is the fact that the recipient of the money is at the same time a worker and a consumer possibly relevant? What meta-analysis should we perform to filter out the ideological commitment?

But of course this is, as you so correctly point out, not Science, it's Economics. So instead let's abandon a rational epistemology throw our hands in the air and agree with whatever position our particular political tribe is advocating at this particular election cycle. Feels good!

"The word "billion" once meant one million million (1,000,000,000,000), but this has become obsolete and the word has been used meaning one thousand million (1,000,000,000) unambiguously for decades in the English language."